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From 1995 through 2002, P/PV worked with six neighborhoods around the country to develop and institute a framework of "core concepts" to guide youth programming for the nonschool hours. The goal was to create programming that would involve a high proportion of each neighborhood's several thousand adolescents. This report summarizes the basic lessons that emerged from this Community Change for Youth Development (CCYD) initiative. The lessons address such topics as the usefulness of a "core concepts" approach; the dos and don'ts of involving neighborhood residents in change initiatives; the role of research; the role of youth; and the capacity of neighborhood-wide approaches to attract high-risk youth.

Given the limited experience that programs have had with young fathers and the field's limited knowledge about the type of services that would engage and benefit them, P/PV determined that a test of various local service-delivery approaches was needed to provide comparative information for policymakers and the field. This interim report of our Young Unwed Fathers Pilot Program documents the struggles and achievements we had in implementing this program during the early 1990s in six sites across the nation: Cleveland, Racine, Fresno, St. Petersburg, Annapolis, and Philadelphia.

Over the past decade, increasing attention has been given to nonschool hours as a vehicle for providing some of the basic supports -- caring adult attention and guidance, career development, and opportunities to engage in positive learning and enrichment activities -- that encourage positive youth development. This report examines the assumptions that youth with higher levels of support are more successful in school, work and their communities, and that youth in moderately poor urban communities lack adequate supports. Community-wide surveys completed in 1996 in three communities -- Austin, Savannah, and St. Petersburg (Florida) -- found a discouraging decline in supports and opportunities as youth get older. From 15 to 25 percent of youth 18 years and older were not engaged in any positive structured activities, had very few adults in their lives, and were not working.

This paper provides a brief research background on the field of alternative staffing and what we have learned about connecting job brokering activities with training and education opportunities. This includes drawing on recent research by the Center for Social Policy on the Alternative Staffing Demonstration II, 2008 to 2011, funded by the Charles Stewart (C. S.) Mott Foundation. The paper also offers several points for consideration in connecting temporary help workers to training opportunities. Specifically, it puts the role of alternative staffing in the context of the entry-level job market and discusses the value of staffing services from the perspective of job seekers, customer businesses, and the workforce development field. A number of examples are provided of training programs and partnerships that combine skills development with job brokering. Overall, we address two questions: 1) What do we know about connecting staffing services with training opportunities?, and 2) What are some promising examples of connecting ASO workers to skills training?

This paper presents results of a three-year study of workers and former workers at four Alternative Staffing Organizations (ASOs). ASOs are fee-for-service job brokering businesses created by community-based organizations and national nonprofits whose objective is to gain access to temporary and "temp to permanent" opportunities for workers facing barriers to employment. The paper looks specifically at the relationship between the personal characteristics of workers, their temporary work experiences through the ASO, and the subsequent employment status of former ASO workers, determined through a follow-up survey conducted by telephone six to eight months after workers had left theASO. We found several factors influenced employment status at the time of follow-up. Workers with jobs at follow-up had worked substantially more weeks through the ASO, had higher earnings than other study participants, had received some additional services at the ASO, and, in some cases, had held ASO assignments at the ASO's parent organization.However, workers without a valid driver's license, those with children and those who were receiving public assistance had more trouble finding a job after their time at the ASO.This paper demonstrates how the complex relationships between individual worker characteristics and experience with an ASO affect future job prospects.

Organizations that aim to improve the experiences and employment chances of job seekers who face barriers to employment have, over the years, had to contend directly with potential employers and their requirements. This is particularly true for community-based job brokers that use a temporary staffing model, offering job access and immediate work to their service population.
Alternative staffing organizations (ASOs) are worker-centered, social purpose businesses that place job seekers in temporary and "temp-to-perm" assignments with customer businesses, and charge their customers a markup on the wage of the position. These fee-for-service organizations can help job seekers who face labor market barriers gain work experience and access potential employers. Created by community-based organizations and national nonprofits, ASOs are often embedded within larger organizations that provide other employment, training, and human services to their community. The parent organizations may also be operating other social enterprise ventures.
Businesses that contract ASOs for staffing services are customers that expect a service, but also represent an opportunity for employment and work experience for job seekers. Thus ASOs must operate with a dual agenda to serve both sides of the equation. In related publications, we have explored how ASOs operate as social enterprises and how the model fits within the goals of the parent organization. With detailed information from five well-established ASOs, and as part of two waves of a demonstration initiated by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, we have documented the employment experiences of workers placed in assignments and their employment status after leaving the ASO.
In this paper, we address engagement with businesses and their perspectives on ASO services. This is a major issue for ASOs as well as for other workforce development organizations.
ASOs engage with businesses while selling staffing services and monitoring worker performance. By the very nature of temporary staffing, they receive rapid feedback on worker performance and their services from customer businesses. As such, ASOs provide a window into how to connect to potential employers in order to access opportunities. Also, activities of ASOs shed light on how hiring takes place for entry-level jobs, and how customer businesses use ASOs to solve their entry-level hiring problems.
This paper demonstrates what can be learned from customers of established ASOs about their reasons for using these services. Specifically, it explores how customer businesses use temporary staffing by ASOs, and for what purposes. What business needs do they meet with ASO services? What are their reasons for using an ASO over conventional staffing agencies? And finally, what causes customer businesses to use an ASO and retain the service over time?
These concerns are salient for those organizations considering the creation of an ASO. They also are important for workforce development programs that need to become more active in engaging potential employers and that seek solutions for job seekers who need to connect to employment and need immediate income.